An Oddball President Is Shot, and in a Hospital the Fun Begins

Quibble, if you want, over whether Brian Parks's "Goner" is a play or just an extended bit of sketch comedy. Whatever it is, it is injecting one of the year's dreariest months with enough laughs to last till spring.

They are not, however, laughs for everybody. If John F. Kennedy jokes in a satire about a president who has been shot in the head might offend you, don't go. If the notion of a Chemotherapy Barbie (the hair falls out) seems distasteful, don't go. Otherwise, though, step right in to the Kraine Theater in the East Village for an hourlong exercise in rapid-fire incongruity.

The main plot element in "Goner," such as it is, is that someone shoots President Waterford Novi (Bill Coelius) in the head. Novi is not your typical president -- "Send in the poet laureate," he commands at one point before the shooting. "I want to hear a sonnet." So it probably makes sense that he is taken to something that is less than a typical hospital.

At least, one hopes. We meet its chief surgeon, Warren (David Calvitto), after he has just finished giving his adult daughter a gynecological exam. Another doctor (Matt Oberg) is a bit blunt in the bedside-manner department. ("So, you're pretty much a goner," he advises one patient. When she complains, "But doc, I want to live!" he tells her, "That's just an instinct.") When it comes time to operate on the grievously wounded commander in chief, Warren begins by asking, "O.K., which end's the head?"

Assorted patients, F.B.I. agents, newscasters and other characters flit through as well. The troupe, Word Monger, delivers it all at a pace that often literally doesn't leave you time to laugh, which somehow makes it even funnier.